Georgia 2020 Redistricting Discussion

[S019]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/2d5fdc7d-5ed8-4c5c-9d27-c438f9ca43b0

I've been tinkering with this for a while to see what the GOP could do if they really don't want to concede a 4th pack in Atlanta. It's just as VRA compliant as the current map (and the very Trumpy 5th circuit shouldn't find any problems no matter what). All 10 republican seats should be totally rock-solid for the entire decade, and they would have decent odds of picking up the 2nd. Kemp won all the Atlanta suburban seats by at least 25% so I really doubt they'll be marginal in 10 years time.


GA-01: Buddy Carter's seat is basically unchanged, still stretching along the Georgia Coast. Trends still mildly favour the Republicans in this seat going forward.

GA-02: Sandford Bishop's seat becomes 0.1% more Black than its current iteration while the PVI halves. Abrams' margin of victory goes from 12% to 5%. Bishop still has some crossover appeal and outran Biden by 6%, but when he retires this seat is a ripe pickup opportunity. And it's just as VRA compliant as the current district.

GA-03: Drew Ferguson's seat loses it's eastern arm out to Henry and instead stretches further north up to Cobb. However the character of the district barely changes with the small slice of blueing Atlanta suburbs easily outweighed by rural West Central Georgia.

GA-04: Hank Johnson's seat remains based in DeKalb though it gains a significant amount of deep blue territory in Gwinnett.

GA-05: Still based in Atlanta, John Lewis's old seat loses most of Clayton for more of DeKalb. This seat is Nikema Williams's for as long as she wants it.

GA-06: Marjorie Taylor Greene is the big winner under this map, with her seat now stretching from Dalton, her base in the primary and the runoff, to take in her old home town of Alpharetta in suburban Fulton County. And with Kemp winning this seat by 27% she should have no problems in the general. Northern Fulton and Forsyth are both zooming leftwards however Gainesville and Appalachia completely overpower them.

GA-07: Carolyn Bordeaux is the one big loser in this map with absolutely nowhere to go. The radically redrawn 7th is now R+21 PVI and voted for Kemp by 27%. A wide-open seat it should see a divisive primary between a Gainesville-based Republican and a Gwinnett-based Republican but whoever wins shouldn't have to sweat about winning election at any point in the next decade.

GA-08: Austin Scott's district snakes through Central Georgia up to Athens and drops 6 PVI points in the process. It wouldn't be the snoozefest he's accustomed to but Scott shouldn't have any problem holding this seat.

GA-09: Freshman Andrew Clyde's Northeastern seat is rather radically altered and he now has to deal with a significant democratic constituency with Kemp's margin of victory falls from 59% to 26%. Gwinnett may be zooming leftwards but this is still the seat where Deliverance was filmed.

GA-10: Jody Hice's district loses the rural eastern counties and instead wraps around west to Henry and Fayette and south to Macon. Not quite as safe as the Northern seats however Kemp still won it by 24%.

GA-11: Barry Loudermilk's seat keeps its basic shape but loses about half of Cobb in exchange for taking two more deep red Northern counties. It moves 4 PVI points right and Kemp won it by 27%, so Loudermilk should have no problem holding this seat.

GA-12: Still anchored by Augusta Rick Allen's seat has mild changes that don't affect the partisan balance. Trends should only strengthen the Republican hold on this seat.

GA-13: Sets up a very nasty primary between Lucy McBath and David Scott in this Rorschach blot (which is still less ugly than MD-03). David Scott is a noted DINO who was almost forced into a runoff against an unfunded nobody this cycle, meanwhile McBath is hindered by currently representing exactly 0.7% of this district, including herself. A dark horse in the vein of Keisha Waites could even come through the middle and defeat both of them.

GA-14: Though it's the successor to the current 14th MTG should move to the 6th making this one of two Open seats. It keeps its basic shape taking in Northwestern Georgia however it loses MTG's base of Dalton for a large slice of rapidly diversifying Cobb. Whoever wins the Republican primary should have no problem holding this seat, given Kemp won it by 26%.

The current GA-11 literally swung from Trump+35 to Trump+14, the Atlanta area is moving quicker than many realize, and these Appalachia-Atlanta seats are just asking for trouble, that green especially is very risky, given how the exurbs are slowly bluing, the suburbs are rapidly bluing, and north Georgia is more or less maxed out, and Greene is unusually weak, so drawing her into Cobb County is just asking for trouble by the end of the decade. Given how the current GA-11 swung 21 pts in 4 years, adding 7 pts to the seat won't save it, at that rate it would still flip by the end of the decade. The current 6th swung from Trump+1 to Biden+10 and the current 7th from Trump+6 to Biden+5, these are insane swings and this map is going to become a dummymander, if they continue.

[S019]

9-5 GA with 4 black Atlanta seats and preserving the Southwest VRA seat

https://davesredistricting.org/join/4b904aee-9df7-4fbd-9173-0fa4748d3cbf 9-5 GA

the 10th could possibly be a dummymander down the line, but the seat is extremely Republican outside of Gwinnett, so it should last, in my opinion. McBath's seat was converted into a Republican seat that could flip back by the end of the decade, but the rurals will outvote the Democratic part of the seat for now.

[S019]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/b9b2fcb9-67e0-4b92-962f-3342adde1935

This map is illegal, your 4th is a 75% AA pack and the 5th is not AA enough, especially when you can get 3 60% AA seats, but honestly there is a good case for 4 50%+ AA seats, so in that case your Gwinnett seat should reoriented.

[S019]

My Georgia 6 is black performing. In any event, the lines between it and Georgia 4 can be moved around, to make both 50%+ BCVAP and I am sure the Pubs would be happy to accommodate the Dems if that is what they want, but I tend to doubt that will be an issue.

Given black growth in the Atlanta area, I think it's very likely that the number of black Atlanta seats gets bumped to 4, so your Gwinnett seat likely needs to be adjusted

This map is illegal, your 4th is a 75% AA pack and the 5th is not AA enough, especially when you can get 3 60% AA seats, but honestly there is a good case for 4 50%+ AA seats, so in that case your Gwinnett seat should reoriented.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/9fe0d1f1-32d0-451e-9461-a7c2b74444b9
Thoughts on this one?

Looks fine, except I'd make the Gwinnett seat 50%+ AA for the reasons stated above, also that 11 went from Trump+25 in 2016 to Trump+16 in 2020, it's a time bomb waiting to happen, especially given it includes rapidly bluing North Fulton, I doubt Loudermilk allows this map for that reason.

[S019]

Here's my attempt at a 10-4 GOP Gerrymander map.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/da9781ee-234a-4bfc-82e6-4c4c30a1de38

GA-02 is probably still protected, I don't see this map becoming reality

[S019]

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1442601673315307521?s=21

The GOP is also surprisingly tame in GA as well for this proposed map. Only making McBath's seat more of competitive seat and Bordeaux's seat a Dem sink. I expected 9 R - 5 D map of making GA-6 a Dem sink and GA-7 a new safe R district.

What are the 2020 numbers for GA-6 and 11?

https://twitter.com/BruneElections/status/1442606625957691396

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1442605253078093828

[S019]

This map flips one Democratic seat to the GOP and makes another one very likely to fall if recent trends continue, all in a State that is trending D fast, and red avatars in this thread are calling it good news? Of course the GOP could do worse than that, but they certainly don't deserve brownie points for such an egregious gerrymander.

It's not even a given that that GA-06 falls in 2022 given how GA has been trending, especially in that area, said seat swung D between 2018 and 2020 and GA has consistently swung D since 2014, even if McBath does lose, I'll go out on a limb and say it'll be less than the 2020 margin. It is a gerrymander, but it's a soft one, not an egregious one, an egregious gerrymander would be if they drew tentacles from the Tennessee border to Marrietta and Lawrenceville.

[S019]

Well we'll see how this looks compared to the Senate-proposed draft that we saw earlier.

[S019]

Well so much for that

https://twitter.com/stphnfwlr/status/1460615476199964676?s=21

Either they're trying to crack Bishop, trying to figure how to make his seat as Republican as possible while still performing under the VRA (the two likeliest options imo), or they're playing it totally safe and toying around with how to keep it 50%+ black VAP for the foreseeable future (unlikely imo).

[S019]

There is certainly a possibility for a VRA lawsuit given that another majority minority CD could easily be drawn in Atlanta and yet isn't...

You could also potentially sue to make a majority minority 12th.

My guess is if this map passes , Georgia Dems will sue for a 4th black seat in Atlanta after they win the governorship . You can draw one now probably as well while only touching the 4 Dem sink Blobs so not sure why the GA GOP Doesn't just do it. It wouldn't change the partisanship of any other seats but a court might change up the map more than necessary to get that 4th black district. Waste of time to sue right now.

My best guess why they didn't do it is that it'd free up white parts of blue Gwinnett which would then have to be cracked

I tried this and you end up with this: https://davesredistricting.org/join/4b904aee-9df7-4fbd-9173-0fa4748d3cbf

Now these seats wouldn't be vulnerable per se, but there's a lot of rotation that needs to happen to make it work and incumbents may not be thrilled about that.